Notes and Editorial Reviews

MacGregor has never been one to compromise. Her willingness
to challenge through repertoire adventure is a byword. This
disc corroborates that role.

The nineteen Sonatas and Interludes patter, rattle, click,
resonate, mesmerise, clang and ring with all the elan, delicacy
and plangent finery of the gamelan. These sounds emerge among
the seductive whispers of temple and jungle. I say nineteen
Sonatas and Interludes. In fact one track incorporates both
sonatas 14 and 15 sharing the title Gemini. The wonder
is thatRead more these results, which are intensely beautiful,
are achieved by 'preparing' a concert grand with bits of bamboo,
rubber, plastic, screws, nuts and bolts. The sheer labour that
Cage must have put in to experimenting to achieve these sounds
and then having meticulously to document the additions into
the score is phenomenal. Cage's The Perilous Night is
another example of West Coast USA openness. The note leads us
to expect something darker than the Sonatas and Interludes
but the mood difference is infinitesimal.

The second disc harbours music by Cage, Nancarrow and a tribute
selection. The Cage piece - Bacchanale - is different
from the pieces on CD 1. It throbs with a pounding electric
charge coupling to faint Stravinskian overtones. It picks up
on a generalised Japanese accent.

Robin Hartwell's Piano Piece No. 2 after John Cage is
rather more violent and metallic than Cage though still fractured.
Matthew Fairclough's Inside Out is slower and more contrived:
electronic and apocalyptic. Django Bates' You Live and Learn
superimposes a young girl talking with all sort of other
sounds. The prepared piano makes more conventional piano noises
than we are accustomed to from Cage. It's quite catchy and even
charming in a disorientating sort of way. Stephen Pratt's Three
Studies are just as non-linear as the other pieces but sound
more Cage-like yet in a more muscular ‘plink-plunk’ way – sorry!
Mike Wilson/Zoetrope's Vegan Gravy Mix whimpers and wheezes,
bubbles and burbles. The piano playing uses jazzy figurations
in small shards. It reminded me of a 1970s Blaxploitation film
score. Peter O'Brien's Rasavan adds to the mix with warbling
synthesiser and processed voice tracks. Deirdre Gribbin's The
Broken Piece of the Moon also makes play with a voice-track
which sounds like a call to prayer and lines it up with gamelan
patterning and what sounds to me like the dropping of galvanised
hollow-ware into a brick coal-house. Unaccountable. Mary Black's
Dead sheep is just odd and very short. Jonathan Harvey's
name I know. His Homage to Cage, a Chopin (und Ligeti ist
auch dabei) is a bustling blizzard of metallic shimmers
and rhetorical piano writing. It ends abruptly with a gesture
Rachmaninov would have recognised. Andrew Toovey is another
well kent name. You may not (want) to (be) hear/here has
a man's voice reading a meaning-challenged set of words over
drum impacts and a quiet gamelan patter. Endgame is a
collegiate effort by Talvin Singh and Joanna MacGregor. The
traditional instrumental world of the Indian subcontinent resonates
with bells, piano strums and quiet gong sounds.

Conlon Nancarrow was born in Arkansas and made his home in Mexico.
His reputation rests on the multiplicity of pieces he wrote
for player-piano. The three items here are for unadulterated
piano. They are under the sauntering and lolling spell of the
blues or in the case of the Prelude indebted to a wayward martellato
ragtime. The Three Canons for Ursula make play with a
scatter of little unarticulated note impacts, emergent musings
and rapid-fire Handelian scraps. The Ursula referred to is the
pianist Ursula Oppens. The last three tracks comprise Studies
3c, 6 and 11. These swing and sway along, obsessive
in their repetition of note-cells and national stereotypes and
conventions - Spanish in the case of No. 6. The final study
dots and pegs along but at last finds a sort of bitterly horror-struck
acceleration.

Do not be put off by the Cage name and the avant-garde reputation.
It does not matter - just relax and accept the music for what
it is.

The candid and informative liner-notes are by Joanna MacGregor.

This is part of the revealing and interest-barbed Sound Circus
series from Warner - MacGregor. These releases include her 2CD
Gershwin (2564 67830-6), her Goldberg (2564 68393-3), MacGregor
Live in Buenos Aires (2564 68475-9) and her four CD Messiaen
collection including Harawi, Quatuor Pour la fin du
Temps and Vingt Regards (2564 68393-2).

There are alternative versions of the Sonatas and Interludes
including Henck (Wergo) and Tilbury (Explorer - the home
of analogue tapes from the Decca Headline LP label) but none
of them have this particular mix and the bargain price surely
encourages experimentation.